Conjuring Up the Magic of the Past in Greece

I shall refrain from detailing the pollution of the canals of Venice, Italy, and all about how this lovely old city has been slowly sinking into the sea to the tragic degree that a couple of good windstorms during a very moderate high tide will flood it about twice this year.

I shan’t tell you all about my wife’s and my recent cruise of Greek islands either. My reason for this is purely humane. I think there is nothing more tiresome than a traveler’s blow-by-blow itinerary, accompanied by hundreds of slides or snapshots of places he can’t remember clearly.

Nevertheless, the urge to share travel impressions is a strong human trait, and, being of that species, I cannot resist indulging in a little more discreet travelitis. (I promise not to show you my wife’s snapshots.)

Greece strongly reminded us of the more scenic parts of Northern and Southern California.

I never was able to pin down when the eucalyptus trees were imported into Greece from Australia (if they were directly), but it was probably about the 1890s when Jack London and other investors brought the eucalyptus here in hopes it would make good timber trees, which it didn’t in our soil.

Hills covered with olive trees, oleanders, Scotch brooms, figs, grapes, oranges, lemons, roses, plums, apricots, pears, bougainvillea, geraniums, hollyhocks, palms and chaparral are found in Greece.

Traffic in Greece, especially in Athens, abounds with latter day “Mr. Toads” buzzing and zooming about on motorcycles. There is, as one wag in our party observed, “a therapeutic sense of disorder” to Greek traffic.

Greeks are a warmly friendly, honest and seemingly excitable people. It’s common to see only men sitting around in sidewalk cafes, drinking ouzo (a potent anise-flavored beverage made from grape stems and skins), and vehemently discussing, with histrionic gestures, some matter or other. At first I thought all Greeks were angry at one another. Soon I concluded it was the way most of their words are accented on the last syllable that gives the impression of vigor to their speech. Besides, Greeks love to talk, “harpooning” a subject until it expires.

I think many Greeks are born with trowels in their hands. Because of a scarcity of wood, they build well and sturdily with reinforced concrete and stones and bricks. I estimate that 90% of Greek homes are built of concrete, in post and beam construction, the walls filled in with bricks or stones, then plastered white. Arches and red-tiled roofs abound. Many of the white exterior walls are decorated with bands of blue and yellow ocher.

And, yes, I did perform the ancient conjuring trick of the cups and balls, about a dozen times in Greece for fellow travelers on shipboard. I doubt if the trick, which dates back at least 2,000 years, is of Greek origin, but it was sufficiently popular way back then to be mentioned in one of the “Epistles” of Alciphron. He describes a performance he saw in a theater, in which “a man came forward and placed on a three-legged table three small dishes, under which he concealed some little white round pebbles.” Alciphron then relates how the pebbles passed mysteriously from dish to dish, all of which “rendered me almost speechless and made me gape with surprise.”

My performance of the cups in this ancient country took on deep significance for me. It was wonderful to watch my contemporaries gape with surprise at such a venerable feat, proving beyond doubt that the psychological and physical deception of the trick is as valid today as it was at least two millenniums ago.

There is peculiar satisfaction in bridging the centuries like that. It seemed as though that ancient Greek magician was my brother and my shipboard companions were relatives of the ancient Greeks who watched him perform so long ago.